Prescribed Fire

Fire is an important ecological process. Fire managers use prescribed fire to mimic the natural role of fire on the landscape. Prescribed fire can be used to maintain and restore the condition and function of ecosystems and to reduce wildfire risk. This work, in turn, assists fire responders in protecting communities, property, and infrastructure in the event of wildfire. Prescribed fires are carefully planned and managed to reduce wildfire risk while minimizing potential environmental, economic, and public health impacts. Benefits of prescribed fire over wildfire include the ability of managers to plan for it, control the conditions of the burn, and minimize the smoke impacts.

USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists have expertise in fire behavior, pre-planning for wildfire, risk management, social science aspects of prescribed fire and, along with collaborators, have developed many science-based tools to support prescribed fire planners and decision makers. Further, the Rocky Mountain Research Station is working closely with land managers to scale up the use of prescribed fire treatments. 

Featured Work

Prescribed fire effectiveness

• Long-term studies of prescribed fire effects—and the photographs taken at these sites —help us understand how different types of fire and other forest management affect the trajectory of forests. This Science You Can Use — in Photos brings together what we know about fire and fuel treatments in dry conifer forests across the western United States.
• More high-severity wildfire is occurring in the western United States and affecting people and forests in challenging ways. A comprehensive review of fuel treatment research shows that returning low-severity fire through prescribed burning is an effective way to reduce high-severity fire.
• Researchers are tracking results from two of the longest-running fuel treatment studies in the western United States–at the Lick Creek Demonstration-Research Forest and the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, both in western Montana. These studies both demonstrate the value of prescribed fire in fuel treatment effectiveness and longevity. 

Prescribed fire smoke and emissions

• To better understand the relative abundance of smoke pollutants, known as emission factors, Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists set out to measure the emission factors from Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, and black spruce/jack pine forest fuels.
• The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) is a large-scale inter-agency effort, involving a number of Rocky Mountain Reserach Station scientists, to identify how fuels, fire behavior, fire energy, and meteorology interact to determine the dynamics of smoke plumes, the long-range transport of smoke and local fire effects such as soil heating and vegetative response.
• As part of the FASMEE project, Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists and collaborators are measuring trace gas and aerosol emissions of wildfires and prescribed fires in great detail, and relating these data to fuel and fire conditions at the point of emission. They are also using field and LiDAR datasets to more accurately estimate fuels and fuel consumption on fires to better understand using “good” fires to reduce “bad” fire effects and smoke impacts.

Prescribed fire effects

• FOFEM (a First Order Fire Effects Model) is a computer program for predicting tree mortality, fuel consumption, smoke production, and soil heating caused by prescribed fire or wildfire. Currently, FOFEM provides quantitative fire effects information for tree mortality, fuel consumption mineral soil exposure, smoke, and soil heating. Estimated emissions are included for CO2, CO, CH4, SO2, NOx, PM2.5 and PM10.
• Rocky Mountain Research Station researchers and collaborators are asking whether prescribed fires can maintain ecosystems for use by birds while reducing fuels. This Birds and Burns study confirmed that the prescribed fires limited wildfire burn severity, but the reduction in burn severity didn’t change patterns of bird responses to wildfire. Species that normally move into burned areas and those that move away from burned areas were the same whether or not the site was treated with prescribed fire.

Landscape scale prescribed burning

• The Science You Can Use Bulletin Getting More Fire on the Ground: Landscape-Scale Prescribed Burning Supported by Science surveys the work  scientists and partners are doing to advance our understanding of fire, develop planning tools, and understand public perceptions to help reduce barriers to conducting prescribed fires.

Fire adapted communities

• The Wildfire Research Center (WiRē) works with wildfire practitioners to seek locally tailored pathways to create fire adapted communities.
• Wildfire Risk to Communities is a national tool designed to help communities understand, explore, and reduce their wildfire risk.

Lessons learned

• Organizational Learning from Prescribed Fire Escapes provides a review of prescribed fire escapes over the last 10 years in the United States and Australia.​